A patently obvious way to make money
Does your organisation have hidden bright sparks in its workforce? As Lucy Samuels, partner with European patent and trade mark attorneys Gill, Jennings & Every tells Katie Pattullo, registering a patent can be a tool to increase your organisation’s competitive edge – and don’t go looking for any mad scientists, your innovators can look deceptively normal...
The UK Intellectual Property Office’s description for intellectual property is that it allows you to own things you create in a similar way to owning physical property – and using it to gain reward, which ultimately encourages further innovation and creativity.
If, as Wolfgang Grulke founder and CEO of global business and technology think tank Future World International, says “innovation is the religion of the 21st century”, then to be able to compete in today’s competitive landscape, organisations need to be able to attract and develop their radical innovators.
Patent is one of four main categories that can be described as intellectual property – the others being, copyright, designs and trade marks. Because patents are only ever scientific, to be a patent attorney you have to have a technical background and then learn the legal issues/aspects on the job – it can take up to five years to qualify.
Lucy Samuels of European patent and trade mark attorneys Gill, Jennings & Every decided to follow a career as a patent attorney having left university with a degree in chemistry. “I left university with a scientific degree and, having decided a career as a lab scientist was not my ideal career path, I realised that patent law was a profession where I could use my scientific background without being stuck in a lab all day.”
The origins of patents for invention are obscure and no one country can claim to be the first with a patent system but Britain does have the longest continuous patent tradition in the world. Henry VI granted the earliest known English patent for invention to Flemish-born John of Utynam in 1449. The patent gave John a 20-year monopoly for a method of making stained glass, required for the windows of Eton College, that had not been previously known in England.
There is a common belief the innovators and inventors that patent attorneys such as Samuels work with could be categorised as mad scientists. As Samuels explains: “This is definitely a myth, the people I work with are very business savvy. They know that paying for their intellectual property is only worthwhile if it is going to make their business money.”
Generally, the largest sectors for patents are telecommunications, information technology and pharmaceuticals but, as Samuels adds: “It tends to go in cycles, over the last decade there has been a significant increase in patent applications for computer- and software-related inventions. Prior to this there was a boom in biotechnology-related patents due to the increase of interest in genetic engineering.”
For businesses wanting to protect their invention it is not enough to file for patent in their own country alone. For example, a lot of patents in Japan, a country regarded to have a high rate of technical progress and innovation, are filed by companies in the US trying to protect their market in Japan. To do this on a global scale the organisation would have to file for a patent in each relevant marketplace.
So do the public benefit from these patents or is it really just the filer? Samuels thinks there is an argument for both sides: “Initially the individual or organisation that have payed for either the trade mark or patent benefit. Subsequently, however, the public can benefit from a trade mark because it means they can distinguish goods of one trader from those of another. With patents, because they have finite protection, it encourages inventors to disclose all their technical innovations, rather than keep them to themselves.”
Budding inventors can start young. Inspired by Archie The Inventor from children’s television series Balamory, little Sam Houghton, aged five, is thought to be the youngest ever to be granted official patent for invention. Having watched his Dad struggle with two brooms to sweep up the leaves, he disappeared into the garden shed and emerged with two brooms strapped together with a large rubber band – the Improved Broom.
